


For One Night

by sequence_fairy



Series: Ceremonials [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dimension hopping Rose finds a Doctor...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Practical Ghosts

 

> _And I had a dream, about my old school,  
>  and she was there all pink and gold and glittering, _  
> _I threw my arms around her legs, came to weeping._  
>  _And I heard your voice, as clear as day,_  
>  _and you told me I should concentrate,_  
>  _it was all so strange and so surreal,_  
>  _that a ghost should be so practica_ l. 
> 
> \- Only If For One Night - F+TM

 

Rose sighs, pushing her hair back off her face for the fifteen hundredth time in the last hour. She’s exhausted. They all are. Mickey’s laid out on his back on the floor, laptop open on his chest as he mutters to himself while he checks and rechecks the calculations again. Jake’s leaning against the aluminum table, his three day beard making him look like the street urchin he was before Torchwood snapped him up. He’s turning the locator chip over in his hands and watching Rose covertly out of the corner of his eye.

She knows that the long hours and the stress are showing in her face, shadows dark under her eyes and clothes that hang off a body that used to be lusciously curved. She’s lost weight, losing sleep and still can’t seem to figure out how to latch on to the TARDIS’ signature in order to time the jumps. The cannon leaves her woozy, achy and prone to migraines that make her unable to do more than crawl from the bed to the bathroom. She hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks, snatching what she can in between jumps and she will not quit. She will not give up on finding him, because if she stops, she’ll collapse and will not be able to get up again.

“Okay boys,” she says, injecting some bravado into her voice, “let’s give ‘er one more shot then we’ll call it quits for tonight. We could all use some sleep.”

Mickey heaves himself up off the floor and _looks_ at her. Rose shakes her head gently, she knows what he’s asking and he rolls his eyes and lets it drop. Jake looks between them, but doesn’t ask. He knows her intentions as well. Together, the three of them get set up. Rose zips her leather jacket up to her neck, and checks that the TARDIS key is on its chain around her neck. Mickey steps behind the console as Jake attaches the locator chip to the collar of her jacket. He gives her shoulder a squeeze as he steps back and Rose gives him a wan smile in return.

She steps onto the platform, boots heavy and takes a deep breath as she hears the hum of the equipment firing up. Mickey gives her a thumbs up, and Rose counts down in her head.

Three.

_Breathe in Rose._

Two _._

_Exhale._

One.

There’s a high-pitched whine, and a jolt and she feels like her whole self is being squeezed into nothing before there’s nothing but white light.

She stumbles when she arrives, blinking to clear her vision and reaching behind her for something to lean on. Her hand lands against the cool metallic surface of a wall. She leans against it for a minute, getting her bearings and giving her stomach a chance to settle. Quickly, she digs the scanner out of the pocket of her jacket, testing the air and seeing if she can get it to give her a reading of when and where she is. The air is stale where she is, but perfectly breathable, so she pushes off from the wall, and steps through the door opposite and out into what looks like a marketplace on a space port.

She’s far from the only human in the place, so Rose makes an educated guess and places herself somewhere in the 3rd Great and Bountiful Human Empire. She searches out a quiet spot, needing to give the scanner a chance to work, and let Mickey and Jake know she’s arrived safely. She pings them with the locator chip, still amazed every time by the fact that they managed to rig up a way for her to let them know she was safe and enters her countdown into her wristwatch. She gets three hours, unless she pings them again requesting more time or requesting an early extraction. Thankfully, they’ve never had to request the latter, but she’s used the former almost every jump.

Even if she doesn’t find the Doctor, she’s supposed to recon for more information about the stars going out and find out anything she can about where she’s landed. The scanner burbles on the table, and Rose glances at the readout and gives herself a mental high five. She’s smack in the middle of the 3rd GBHE, and has landed herself on the space port orbiting a planet called Xylox, and she remembers suddenly that she was here once before.

It was after Utah and the Dalek. The Doctor had been withdrawn and pricklier than usual and they’d landed here to get some parts for the TARDIS. He’d unwound progressively as they’d spent the day picking through bins in one of any number of market stalls and Rose had found a pretty scarf at one of the stalls in the textiles section and the Doctor had insisted that she have it. She’d had her first lesson in inter-galactic haggling that day. The scarf, like so many of her things from her room in the TARDIS, was lost to her now.

She gets to her feet, and notes the time on her watch. Lots of time, she can explore, find something to eat and be back in her dimension before midnight.

It’s nearly time to ping Jake and Mickey to bring her home when she hears it. That unmistakable sound that makes her heart pound and her stomach swoop with nerves. Her feet carry her towards the sound with no conscious effort on her part.

The TARDIS materializes next to the door of the storage closet she’d landed in earlier, and Rose backs around the corner of the hall, peering around the wall. The Doctor that steps out is not hers. For a moment, all she can feel is a rush of crushing disappointment. The first time she finds him, and it’s not even him. She quells the disappointment, and begins to try and discern when this is for him. He’s tall, gangly legs and floppy brown hair, trailed by a cute brunette in a short skirt and leggings who looks a bit shell-shocked.

The Doctor is nervy too, Rose thinks, he’s clutching at the girl’s hand, eyes darting around the corridor. He tugs his companion down the hall in the other direction and Rose steps around the corner to look at the TARDIS. She’s changed too, bluer and a little less battered looking.

“Hello old girl,” she murmurs, running a hand down the scarred blue wood she’d never thought she’d see again. The TARDIS fizzes happily in her mind, and Rose grins stupidly. The key around her neck warms suddenly, and Rose pulls it out, holding it in the palm of her hand. It glows, shimmery and golden, against her skin.

On an impulse, she tries the key in the door. It swings open easily, and Rose notes that the Doctor must’ve oiled the hinges, no telltale creak this time. The console room is different, clinical almost, dark though and a little bit flashy. Rose finds she misses the coral and hears the TARDIS’ answering nostalgia in the wistful hum she gives when Rose fingers the knobs on the console. The rotor is still that unearthly blue that Rose has never been able to find recreated anywhere else in the multiverse.

“I’m telling you Clara, it was here,” the Doctor’s voice is right outside and Rose freezes. “Something came through here, the temporal distortion is everywhere.” She can hear the companion, Clara’s, murmur and the Doctor’s answering grumble as he unlocks the door.

Rose scrambles to hide, but the TARDIS is having none of it. The lights go up in the console room and Rose watches the Doctor step into the TARDIS, stop, take a step back, stare and finally close his eyes and turn around. Clara huffs and pushes past him, then stops too as she sees Rose standing in front of the console.

“Doctor?” Clara asks, and the Doctor turns around, and oh, Rose can see how his jaw clenches and his hands fist before he shoves them into his pockets. “Who’s that?” The Doctor doesn’t answer, just strides up the ramp, fury radiating off him in waves. Rose takes a step back when he reaches her, startled by the rage suffused on his features.

“Whatever you are, whoever you are, how did you get into my TARDIS and why are you wearing that face?” His voice is rough, charged with anger and something Rose identifies as desperation. This is later for him then, Rose decides. She’s travelled with him and he’s lost her. He leans forward, looking not at her, but through her, like he’s dissecting her to find out what sort of creature she is. His green eyes are dark and Rose swallows before speaking.

“Doctor,” she says, “it’s me. It’s Rose.” He rears back, and Clara, shaken out of her stupor, stomps up the ramp after the Doctor.

“Who are you?” she asks, planting hands on hips and thrusting her chin out, dark eyes flashing with fire. Rose ignores the question and looks back at the Doctor. He’s clenching and unclenching his fists, mouth set in a hard, disbelieving line.

Rose throws caution to the wind and plays her trump card. She steps forward, catching the lapel of his jacket in her hand so he can’t get away and leans in close. “Bad Wolf.” She whispers. She hears the sharp intake of his breath, and lets him go when he stumbles back. Clara looks between them, confused.

“Bad wolf?” She asks, “what’s that?” The Doctor waves her quiet, and Rose watches him as his eyes widen, his skin pales and finally, _finally_ , he looks at her.

“Rose?” He asks, she nods, eyes filling with tears that fall unchecked down her cheeks. “ _Rose_ ,” he breathes, and closes the distance between them to tug her into a bruisingly hard hug that squeezes the air from her lungs in a whoosh. She hugs him hard right back, burying her face in the tweed of his coat, the scratchy fabric so dissimilar to the soft suede of his old coat.

The hug lasts for a minute, maybe days, maybe forever, before they are interrupted by Clara’s polite cough and a shrill alarm from the TARDIS. The Doctor and Rose disengage awkwardly. She looks across at him, and notes the suspiciously bright eyes and the sloppy grin that probably match her own.

Her watch buzzes on her wrist, and Rose feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. She’s out of time. She can already hear the whine of the return jump powering up, and the last glimpse she has of this Doctor’s face are his wide eyes and a hand reaching out before she blinks out of the TARDIS in a flash of light and a crackle of electricity. She’s already yelling when she arrives on the landing pad at Torchwood. Both Jake and Mickey take a step back as she rounds on them. “Send me back! Send me back!” she cries, cutting off Jake’s protest with a slashing motion of her hand, “I found him,” she says, swaying where she stands, this last go round of jumps finally catching up with her, “I found him,” she says again, voice raw, “but he’s changed,” she says, a sob escaping her before she crumples. Jake throws off his shock first and is there to catch her before she hits the ground.

He gathers her into his arms, looking at Mickey over her head. The two men share a glance heavy with meaning before Mickey powers down the cannon. The warehouse goes silent, but for the hitching sobs Rose is trying to muffle into Jake’s shoulder.


	2. The Only Light

> _And the only solution was to stand and fight._  
>  And my body was bruised and I was set alight,   
> but you came over me like some holy rite,   
> and although I was burning,   
> you’re the only light.   
>   
> Only If For One Night - F+TM

They take a break after that; one that’s enforced by both Jackie and Pete Tyler, the former a much more formidable foe than the latter. Jackie and Rose have an explosive row in the lobby of Torchwood’s public head office in London when Rose refuses to return to the Tyler estate and the tabloids spend the next few weeks gleefully speculating about the wild child heiress.

Rose doesn’t see any of it, as she’s taken refuge on the north coast, hiding out in a tiny cottage that sits sort of forlornly on the edge of a promontory overlooking the sea. She spends her days puttering around the cottage, the biting north wind ignored as she runs up and down the beach every morning. A month passes, then two, and finally three months have gone.

She’s beginning to feel as though she might never be ready to return, until she dreams of her old middle school. In the dream, it must have been early summer, as the air was warm and awash in light. She’d turned a corner and come face to face with a woman, glowing gold and her hair lifting in a wind only she could feel. The sudden rush of familiar warmth accompanied by a lilting melody of bells on the wind made her breath catch in her throat and for a moment, she swears she can hear it.

She wakes with tears in her eyes and echo of a voice in her mind; his voice, calling her name like the last time. “Doctor?” she breathes, and it’s like he hears her, the voice in her head telling her to keep on, never give up and with a phantom brush of lips on her forehead, the presence dissipates.

For the first time in three months, Rose feels like herself. She gets up, goes for her run, and decides that she will return to London, the Dimension Cannon and her search.

Her return to London is in the dead of night, in the middle of a November storm that lashes the city with buckets of rain and heavy wind. The drive from the coast is harrowing and Rose has to work to unclench her hands from around the steering wheel when she pulls up to her flat.

She arrives at the warehouse early the next morning. She’s brewing coffee and waiting for the Dimension Cannon to come online when Mickey arrives. He accepts the steaming mug she hands him without words, and they sip in silence while the warehouse fills with the hum of the Cannon warming up. When Jake and the rest of the team arrive, Rose is ready to go. Jake runs through a last set of safety checks while Mickey helps her fasten the locator chip to the collar of her jacket.

The countdown begins as she steps onto the launchpad, and Rose breathes in through her nose and exhales as the world is squeezed into nothing and she is thrown through the fabric of space-time.

She lands in a clearing. The sky above her is lit with stars, and the air is filled with the sweet smell of night-blooming jasmine. As she breathes through the discomfort of landing, she fumbles for the scanner in her pocket, setting it on a low stone beside her. She pings Jake and Mickey and notes the time on her watch.

While she waits for the scanner to finish, she takes stock of her surroundings. The clearing is bounded on all sides by thick forest, wind whispering through the trees. She turns in a circle, eyes following the circle of standing stones that line the edge of the clearing. She picks the scanner up off the stone she’d set it on, realizing that it is the altar stone in this open air temple.

She can’t quite make out the screen on the scanner, some sort of distortion in the atmosphere she thinks, but there are no hazard lights blinking or alarms going off. She tucks the device back into her pocket as the hairs on the back of her neck lift. It’s all the warning she has before everything goes to hell.

She wakes on a stone floor, curled around herself in a ball. She moans as she struggles to sit.

“Easy love,” a voice says, as gentle hands help her to sit. She keeps her head lowered, face hidden by the curtain of her hair until she manages to get the room to stop spinning. Finally, it does and she lifts her head. He may be filthy, wearing clothes that look like they’ve been scavenged from a garbage skip somewhere, but she’d know those blue eyes anywhere.

“Jack?” her voice is hoarse and Rose clears her throat, “Jack Harkness? You’re alive!”

“Sorry sweetheart, you’ve got the wrong guy,” he smiles apologetically and Rose’s stomach swoops at the familiar grin. “You can call me Nick,” and he sticks his hand out to her to shake.

Rose hesitates, before slipping her hand into his. The grip is warm and familiar like the smile, but Jack, no, Nick’s eyes are wary and watch her closely. “I’m Rose,” she says, “where are we?”

Nick glances around and Rose takes her cue to look at the room she’s in. Stone walls, stone floor, what looks like a hard mattress on a stone bench, and a heavy, wooden door set into the wall opposite the bench. A cell; which is not all that unfamiliar of a place to wake up in, but still not her intended destination.

She reaches for the locator chip on her collar, and realizes with a start that they’ve taken her coat. She does a quick mental inventory; she’s lost the scanner, the chip, her taser, and the nifty rebreather they’d been able to scavenge from a downed craft in the Thames last year. She still has her TARDIS key, nestled safely on its chain between her breasts and her hand goes to it automatically.  They hadn’t taken her watch either, but before she can check how much time has passed, the cell door is opened.

Nick gets to his feet, and Rose rises, unsteadily, beside him. Their visitor is a heavy-set man with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose. He speaks in a guttural language that grates against Rose’s ears, but Nick answers in the same language. What she wouldn’t give for the TARDIS’ translation circuit now. The man leaves and the door slams shut with a heavy thud.

“Get some rest,” Nick suggests, pointing at the mattress. Rose moves to that side of the cell, sinking down on the mattress without any intent to get any rest.

“What did he say?” she asks, “What is this place? Do you know where they’ve taken my things?”

Nick scrubs his hands through his hair, and circles the cell before coming to a stop in front her. The piercing blue gaze is anything but friendly, and Rose’s attempt at banter dries up in her throat. “Where are you from? Who are you?” Nick asks, voice harsh. Rose spreads her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I told you, my name’s Rose. I’m not from around here, I’m just passing through. I’m looking for someone,” she pauses, and Nick’s eyebrow lifts in question, “I’m looking for a friend,” she finishes.

“Is Jack Harkness the friend you’re looking for?” Nick asks, and Rose shakes her head. Nick resumes his pacing. She watches him pace as the minutes, then hours tick by and a quick check of her watch shows she’s been gone almost a day. She spares a thought for Jake and Mickey, knows they must be trying to figure out a way to pull her back and hoping they don’t pull her coat back without her in it.

Eventually, she dozes, leaning back against the wall while Nick paces and prowls the cell.

She wakes sometime later, and what she wouldn’t give for a toothbrush. She’s about to ask him where they are again, when he stops suddenly, and pressing a finger to his lips, leans against the door. She can barely make out voices down the hall, but Nick’s brows furrow together as he listens.

When he steps away from the door, Rose lets the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding go and waits for Nick to share what he’d heard. He stays silent, and Rose feels the churn of anxiety in her stomach.

“Nick,” she says, working hard to keep her voice steady, “what is happening?”

When he finally looks at her, there’s a heaviness in his gaze that sends shivers down her spine. She wraps her arms around herself, and Nick rests a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m so sorry.”

The door to the cell bangs open again, and Nick puts himself between the two guards who enter the cell and Rose. There’s a flash, the smell of something acrid and Nick stumbles, sinking to the floor, eyes open in surprise. One of the guards reaches for her, and Rose panics. She flails, kicking out with both feet, her Torchwood hand to hand training fleeing her. One guard catches her hands, pulling them behind her back. She bares her teeth in a snarl as the second guard approaches her. There is an explosion next her head and the last thing she hears is the ringing in her ears.

She comes to on her back, thrashing. Her throat is raw, eyes stinging in the smoke. Above the roar of the blaze she can hear a low chant, but she can’t make out who is beyond the ring of flames.  She’s on the altar stone in the clearing, and she can see the sky through the smoke rising into the air. She follows it up, ignoring the heat and the smell of singed hair and the pinprick of embers landing on her skin. She follows the smoke all the way up to the stars, the bone deep chill of the vacuum of space wrapped around her heart.

The sounds of fighting below draw her back, and she slams back home at the slice of the bonds on her legs. Nick’s face is close to hers, and Rose smiles. “Cutting it a bit close there?” she says, trying for bravado and Nick’s answering grin is sharp.

“Right on time as always sweetheart,” he says, and grabs her hand to pull her off the stone. They flee the stone circle and make for the woods.  They stumble through the edge of the trees and on through the dark. Eventually, Nick slows and they come to a rambling stop at the base of a rise. Rose, bent at the waist to catch her breath, starts coughing.

The taste of the smoke sits heavy on her tongue and she coughs, wheezing as she tries to get her breathing back under control. She shakes off Nick’s hand, and leans against the nearest tree for support. Eventually, she straightens and Nick looks her over, appraising her, “found your things.” He hands her the scanner and her jacket.

“We need to keep moving.” Nick says, and reaches for her hand again. Rose shakes her head, and pulls her jacket on. The leather is a comforting weight on her shoulders, and she fumbles with the collar, locating the chip and sending the distress call she’s never had to use before. She knows it’ll only be a few minutes before the cannon pulls her home, and she steps into Nick’s space, reaching up to touch his face.

“Thank you,” she says, and leans up to kiss him on the cheek. At the last moment, he turns his head and she catches his mouth instead. The kiss is brief, and Nick draws back to look at her. She lets her hands fall to her side, and regards him steadily.

“Not a problem,” he says, flashing a devil may care smile and giving her a wink. He scrubs a hand through his hair, “I hope you find who you’re looking for,” he says, taking her hands in his.

“Me too,” Rose answers, “me too.” They stand together in the clearing for a moment. She can hear the whine in her ears that means the return jump is powering up, and she drops Nick’s hands.

The world compresses into nothing and Rose is pulled back to the Torchwood warehouse. She lands on the launch pad, only to be bundled onto a gurney and rolled into an infirmary. She’ll spend the next week trying to wash the stink of smoke out of her hair.

 

 


	3. Secret Ceremonials

They go months without an incident, without so much as a hint that the TARDIS is anywhere near where she’s landing, and Rose becomes more and more discouraged. She’s losing weight again, subsisting on coffee and the cigarettes she’s started smoking again.

It’s late in the warehouse, and as usual, she’s here alone. For weeks after the journey to where ever it was she met the Captain’s clone, or maybe himself, Rose is still not sure, she was watched and evaluated and analysed. Torchwood is nothing if not thorough, and somewhere in their databanks is a file Rose knows holds a lot things she wishes it didn’t.

There is a tacit agreement between herself, Mickey and Jake not to talk about what happened on the last jump. Rose doesn’t want to think about how easy it was to unspool herself from her body and drift among the stars. She doesn’t want to believe she could just let go and never come back. She’s meant to be fighting, to be working, to be trying to find him.

She sighs, and rocks back in the desk chair, propping her boot-clad feet on the edge of the desk. Her phone beeps at her and Rose ignores the sound, focusing instead on her breathing. The one good thing about the psychoanalyzing is that she’s gotten good at dissembling, become able to fake out her two best friends, her mother and even the man she calls dad.

Her and Jackie haven’t rowed in months, and while Rose knows this is because she refuses to rise to the bait, her mother thinks she’s starting to settle into living here; in the wrong city, on the wrong planet and in the wrong dimension. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rose feels out of place, this world pushing her out because she doesn’t belong here. There was never a place in this universe for her, no Rose Tyler shaped hole to fit herself into, and she knows that’s why she can’t settle, can’t stop and will not give up.

Her faith renewed, she stands, pockets her phone and sets the Dimension Cannon to warm up. While she waits for the sequence of calculations she’s inputted to run, and waits for the program to orient itself in space-time, she writes a note, leaving it pinned to her monitor.

She’s fast enough that she can throw the switch and make it to the landing pad with a moment to spare before the world shrinks into the nothing but white light.

Being thrown through time and space is one thing, throwing herself makes the landing rough because she doesn’t have the countdown to clear her head. She tucks and rolls and comes to her feet as something explodes next to her. She throws an arm up to shield herself, and instead meets firm muscle and looks up to catch a pair of steely blue eyes before she’s thrown to the ground.

He’s covering her with his body, long legs clad in dark denim. She can hear his voice from far away asking if she’s alright, but all the lessons on breath control and maintaining an even emotional keel are snatched away in the roll of that northern burr through her ears. He isn’t satisfied by her silence and rolls off her, only to grab her arm and haul her to her feet and pull her along behind him.

Rose follows because she doesn’t know how to do anything else. She’d follow him to the end of the earth, had done even that once. Her heart pounds in the ringing in her ears but she keeps on after him, as the sky rains hellfire above them. They run, hand in hand across this battlefield until he throws himself behind a berm and drags her around with him.

He’s brusque where he handles her, checking her for injuries she knows, and she watches, distracted, as his jaw clenches at the way she hisses involuntarily when he sweeps a hand down her side.  She’s been hit with shrapnel from the blast, bits of earth and metal and plastic and whatever else embedded in the softest part of her torso. The wounds bleed sluggishly, and it’s then that Rose notices the pain. She’s swallowed by it, dragged under by the fire in her side. Before she gives in, she reaches out to touch his hand, “Doctor,” she breathes, “my Doctor.”

He carries her to the edge of the battlefield, reaching the medical tent and calling for help as he sets her gently down on a gurney. The sound of ground to air missiles and the explosions of them hitting their targets fill the silence between the frantic working of the medical staff. The individual pieces of shrapnel at not in and of themselves the problem, it’s what the round was filled with that makes Rose convulse on the table and her skin around the wounds turn an angry red, whose tendrils spread across her skin while she burns with fever.

While she sleeps, he watches her. She’d tumbled out of the air and nearly been blown up. She’s survived the poison that kills all the humans on this planet, and she’d called him by name before she’d succumbed. She’s pretty, this human that all but fell into his path, blonde hair and a body that he can imagine used to be curved gently before it was consumed by whatever obsession she’s feeding instead of herself. He holds her hand, his fingers caressing hers gently as she sleeps.

Sometime, during the dogwatch, the night eerily quiet as both sides rest, she wakes. Her first reaction is to scramble out of bed and the Doctor gentles her on to her back, soothing voice pitched low to calm and Rose lets the sound wash over her. When she settles back against the blankets and breathes out long and slow, the Doctor lets his hands fall from her shoulders and leans back in the chair beside her bed.

“Where,” she tries, throat dry. He pours her a glass of water, which she gulps down. “When?” The Doctor schools his face carefully into an expression of detached interest, but she shakes her head, and settles on where instead.

“Portentia,” the Doctor replies, “a colonized moon in the Suarez system, bit of a hike for you, especially since you seem to have arrived without a ship of any kind.” The Doctor’s words are conversational, but the steel in the blue eyes is not.  

“What’s happening out there?” Rose asks, casting her gaze around the medical tent for her things. That’s twice now she’s lost her stuff, and Rose is beginning to feel like she should just embed the chip under her skin to keep it from wandering off. Her hand flies to her neck, and when she feels the comforting weight of the key, she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Civil war,” is the Doctor’s curt answer, and Rose nods. His eyes catch on the glint of the key under her shirt and Rose closes her hand over it instinctively, “what’s that?” he asks, reaching out for her hand.

Rose shrinks back, mind racing while she tries to come up with a way to keep him from seeing, but he’s too fast, and has the key in his hand before she can stop him. All of a sudden, there’s a rush of warmth in the back of her mind and Rose can hear the cheerful hum of the TARDIS through her connection with the Doctor.

“How -?” the Doctor begins, letting the key drop from a shaking hand, “where did you get that?” The shift in his mood is instant, a darkness rolling behind his eyes and something predatory in the way he leans over her. “Tell me,” he intones, and Rose feels like all the air has gone out of the room. He’s angry, she’s certain, confused because he doesn’t know how someone else would have a key to his TARDIS, and hopeful, hopeful that somewhere, there’s another TARDIS and another Time Lord.

The silence stretches between them, and Rose breaks it, with two words; “from you.”

The Doctor stands up so fast he topples the chair back behind him and stalks out of the tent into the night. Rose waits, shivering the wake of his departure, but he doesn’t come back before her eyes grow heavy and she sleeps.

This time, when she wakes up, it’s to the thunderous blast of an explosion not far from the medical tent. Around her, the staff is bustling those that can walk on their own into movement, and helping those that can’t into various assisted transports and Rose scrambles out of bed. She sees her coat folded in the shelf below the table beside her bed and tugs it on. She’s shaky on her feet, but her head is clear, and she jumps in, helping where she can and ends up directing the evacuation of the ambulatory patients to an awaiting transport ship.

The bay door slams shut and the cargo hold is thrown into darkness before the lights come up. Rose leans back against the hull, taking a moment to catch her breath. She opens her eyes to find him watching her from across the bay, but has no chance to speak before the ship lurches into the sky and she has to grip the cargo-netting to keep from falling.

The jaw-rattling trip is mercifully short, and they set down in the square of an abandoned town on the edge of a vast desert. The wind is raw, lifting particles of sand into the air and blasting them against everything. Rose and the Doctor work together, in silence as they empty the transport ship and get the patients to the waiting make-shift hospital. Once the rush of movement is over, Rose sags against a wall, feeling lightheaded and tingly all over.

The Doctor finds her there, and chivvies her into a chair, handing her a mug of whatever this world’s variation of tea is, and seats himself opposite of her, hands resting on his thighs. Rose sips her tea and the silence stretches out between them, tangible in the stale air of this waiting room. Eventually, the Doctor leans back, stretching his arms over his head, and settles more comfortably into the chair. Rose shifts in her seat, not quite uncomfortable but close to it. His eyes have always been piercing, but here in the silence, they see right through her.

“You know I can’t tell you anything,” she says, injecting some stubborn bravado into her voice. He lifts an eyebrow in challenge, and settles more deeply to wait her out. The silence is interrupted by the shrill ring of an alarm, and the deeper, more visceral sound of mortars hitting the shield around the hospital. The force field will hold, but dust still shakes free from the ceiling and the explosions rumble through Rose’s breastbone.

“Listen,” the Doctor says during a lull, “you can’t tell me who you are, when you’re from, but can you tell me how you got here?”

“Dimension cannon,” Rose replies. The Doctor is momentarily gobsmacked, and Rose files the expression away for future reference, the way his eyes widen and his mouth drops open, before he recovers himself.

“Dimension cannon?”

“Yes. I jump from one to another, hurling myself through the Void and then back home again.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Don’t much like impossible, me,” Rose grins.

“Smart arse,” the Doctor snarks, “tell us your name then Ms. Dimension Hopper?”

“They call me the Bad Wolf,” Rose answers.

“Like the fairy-tale? Blowing houses down or eating little girls?” The Doctor asks, and Rose shakes her head, “like what then?”

Rose doesn’t reply, but something in his gaze firms her resolve, and she reaches for the TARDIS key around her neck. “You know I can’t tell you who I am, but can I ask you to do something for me?”  The Doctor nods slowly, and Rose can see the way he’s calculating the cost of her favour, “just, when I say no, ask me again.” The Doctor’s expression settles into confusion, and Rose reaches between them for one of his hands. “I have to go now,” she says, “please promise me this one thing.”

Rose looks at the Doctor, memorizing the close-cropped hair, his eyes like stormy seas, and the way his hand feels in hers. She stands, and the Doctor gets to his feet as well, and Rose tugs him in for a hug. She breathes in the smell of him, ozone and a citrus spice along with dust and smoke and grease. He hugs her back, arms like steel bands around her back, and when she lets him go, he keeps a hold of one of her hands.

“I promise.” He replies, and Rose smiles up at him, a real smile, tongue-touched and wide. He smiles back at her, the same way he always used to and Rose steps back, reaches up for her collar and pings the Cannon. She has thirty seconds, and she leans up to press a kiss to his cheek, before turning to run down the hall and disappear in a flash of light.

She arrives on a crowded street, ash falling from the sky and a woman with red hair telling her about the keys she’s stowing in the bin, just there.

 

 


End file.
